

nt Mmm'^ 4^titf. 



/^^^^\ 

%^^ 




Glass _ 
Book. 



.OkA 






/ 

A FUNERAL ADDRESS, 

BEFORE THE CITIZENS OF BURLINGTON, 

AT THE REQUEST OF THE COMMON COUNCIL, 

ON TUESDAY, 13 APRIL, 1841; 

ON OCCASION OF THE DEATH 
OF 

WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON, 

LATE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES : 

BT 

THE RT. REV. GEORGE WASHINGTON DOANE, DD., LL.D. 

BISHOP OF NEW JBRSET. 



^ 3Suvltnfltou: 

J. L. POWELL, PRINTER 



M DCCC Xll. 



t 



O God, whose days are without end, and 
whose mercies cannot be numbered ; make 
us, we beseech thee, deeply sensible of the 
shortness and uncertainty of human life ; 
and let thy Holy Spirit lead us through 
this vale of misery, in holiness and righte- 
ousness, all the days of our lives : That, 
wlien we shall have served thee in our 
generation, we may be gathered unto our 
fathers, having the testimony of a good 
conscience ; in the communion of the 
Catholic Church ; in the confidence of 
a certain faith ; in the comfort of a rea- 
sonable, religious, and holy hope ; in fa- 
vour with thee our God, and in perfect 
charity with the world: All which we ask 
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen, 



T ESTIMONY OF RESPECT. 

RESOLUTIONS. 

The following are the proceedings of the Common Council of the City of 
Burlington, held at the City Hall, on the 9th instant, on receiving intelligence 
of the death of the President of the United States, General William Henry 
Harhison'. 

WaEnnAs, it has pleased the Supreme Arbiter of the destinies of nations, by 
an inscrutable dispensation of His unerring wisdom, to remove from his official 
duties, and from life, the Chief Magistrate of the United States ; and Whereas, 
the high and responsible station which he occupied, (independent of his vener- 
able age and long and distinguished services,) renders this event a national be- 
reavement, which calls for a manifestation of feeling, in every section of our 
country. Therefore, 

1. Resolved, That in this afflicting dispensation, it is our duty, as Christians, 
to bow in resignation to the Divine decree, and to acknowledge, with gratitude 
and adoration, the many blessings mercifully extended to us by the same Hand 
that has dealt the blow which now we mourn. 

2. Resolved, That this event calls upon the people as members of the great 
republican family, laying all distinctions aside, to entertain and to evince deep 
feelings of respectful sorrow. 

3. Resolved, That, as representatives of the citizens of Burlington, we 
sincerely sympathise with the afflicted family of our late venerable President, 
and that we feel ourselves partakers in their bereavement. 

4. Resolved, That a person be appointed by this Board, to deliver before the 
inhabitants of Burlington, an appropriate Address, upon this solemn and mourn- 
ful occasion. And that Messrs. Allen, Wetherill, and Burns, in connection 
with the Mayor, be a Committee to carry the last resolution into effect. 

It was, on motion. Resolved, that the Committee last appointed be requested 
to invite Bishop Doane to deliver the Address, contemplated by the 4th Reso- 
lution. 



CORRESPONDENCE. 

Burlington, Jpril 10, 1841. 
Rt. Rev. G. W. Doaxe, D.D,, LL.D. 

Dear Sir — At a special meeting of the Council of the City of Burling- 
ton, convened at the Town Hall, on the 9th inst., for the purpose of expressing 
their sentiments, and sympathizing with their fellow citizens in the national 
calamity which has befallen our country, by the sudden and unexpected death 
of its Chief Magistrate, Gen. William Henry Harrison, the undersigned were 
appointed a Committee to confer with you on the subject, and to invite you to 
deliver, an Address suitable to the occasion, and in commemoration of the vir- 
tues and character of one who has died "full of years and full of honors," at 
such time and place as may best suit your convenience. 
We have the honor to be. 

Very respectfully. 

Your obedient servants, 

A. W. BuRirs, 
Wni. R. Allen, 
Samuel W. Eahl, 
Samuel R. Wetherill. 



Riverside, Saturday morning, April 10, 1841. 
Gentlemen — I have this moment received your very courteous note, request- 
ing me, in behalf of the Council of the City of Burlington, to deliver an Ad- 
dress adapted to the solemn occasion, when the nation mourns the loss of its 
Chief Magistrate, and commemorative of his great virtues and distinguished 
services. Allow me to assure you of my deep and lively sympathy with my 
fellow citizens in this severe bereavement; and of my fervent prayer, that He 
who "doeth all things well," will make this national calamity a profitable lesson 
to us, as a people. Although my appointments are out, for a Visitation of a 
portion of my Diocese, I deem the occasion proper to recal them, for one day, 
that I may discharge the service to which the Council have been pleased to de- 
signate me. I accept the invitation; and propose the afternoon of Tuesday 
next, at 5 o'clock, for the time: leaving the place to be decided by the Council. 
It affords me sincere pleasure to serve at all times, and in any way, the com- 
munity with whom I live ; as it does to subscribe myself. Gentlemen, your 
faithful friend and servant, 

G. W. DOANE. 

Messrs. Burns, Allen, Earl and Wetherill, 

Committee of the Council. 



ADDRESS. 



It is a dark December day. A deep snow clothes 
the ground. A sharp and cutting sleet drives with 
the wind. Against the blinding storm, and through 
the deepening drifts, a youthful soldier, with his 
knapsack on his back, pursues his steadfast way. A 
stripling of nineteen, of slender frame, and feeble 
health, he is an Ensign in the army of America, 
with Washington's commission ; and he marches, 
with his small detachment, on his first service. It 
was a patriot and a Christian duty. There are those 
before me who remember well, w^hat, in my young 
days, was yet a nursery-word, at which the mother 
pressed her infant to her bosom, and children gathered 
closer to the fire — St. Clair's defeat. It was to 
that battle-field, to inter the bones of its six hundred 
slain, that our young Ensign hastened with his troop. 
And though it was a patriot and a Christian duty, 
how much more sternly than the fiercest onset of the 
heady fight, must that still forest field, the lowering 
sky, the howling wind, those gallant men butchered 
by savage hands, and all the recollections and fore- 
bodings of that most disastrous day, have tried the 
spirit of a youthful soldier, on his first campaign I 

It was a chill November night, when a small arny 
of Americans encamped themselves upon a point of 



G 

land, between the Wabash and a tributary stream. 
They were the gentlemen and yeomen of the coun- 
try, who had enrolled themselves, under the territo- 
rial Governor, to defend their homes against the in- 
roads of the hostile Indian tribes, and to chastise their 
insolence. A long and tedious march, through a 
most dreary wilderness, brings them at last to where 
their wily foes await them ; and, on their proposition 
for a conference and treaty, hostilities are intermitted 
for a day. Slowly and cheerlessly the night w^ears ■ 
off, within that guarded camp, with clouds and rain. 
But weary men will sleep, whatever may betide them ; 
and now, for hours, no sound has stirred the stillness 
of the scene, save the lone sentry's guarded step. 
But what is that, which, through "the misty moon- 
beams' struggling light," is seen, not heard, as it 
glides through the prairie grass ? Is it a snake that 
winds his stealthy w^ay ? No ; but a subtler Indian : 
and in one instant he is dead ! Another ; and the 
savage yell starts every sleeper from his cold, damp 
couch, and death begins his work. And was this 
sleeping camp deceived, surprised, betrayed? Was 
their Commander faithless to his trust? No; every 
man had slept where he must fight, his clothes on, 
and his gun loaded. And he, while yet the night 
was young, sat by his tent-fire, till the hour should 
come to rouse his weary comrades. In a moment, 
he was mounted. Where the fight was hottest, there 
was he. A ball, with no commission for his life, flies 
through his hair, in vain his officers remonstrate 
with him for his fearless hazard of liimself. He 
thinks of brave St. Clair, and of the gallant victims 



of that fatal field. He thinks of wasted towns, and 
blazing homes, and mothers slaughtered with their 
infants. And the morning dawns not till the victory- 



is won ! 



Along the banks of the Ohio, spreads a smiling 
farm. A plain and modest mansion rises from a 
sloping lawn. Its owner, having filled, with credit 
to himself, and honour to his country, almost every 
station but the first — fought its battles, governed its 
territories, served it in both houses of Congress, and 
represented it abroad — wears out, in frugal industry, 
his green old age, a plain Ohio farmer : his house, 
the very home of hospitality; his name, the refuge 
and the solace of the poor, the stranger and the or- 
phan ; his style, the noblest that is known to nature's 
heraldry, a patriot, and a patriarch 1 

It is a gusty day in March. Before the morning 
dawns, the Federal city is alive with men. It seems 
now full to overflowing; and yet every hour brings 
hundreds, thousands more. A cavalcade is formed. 
Bells ring, and cannons roar. Fair women, and 
brave men, throng every window of that noble Ave- 
nue. Not a State of the whole twenty six that is 
not represented in that long drawn line. It is the 
nation's Jubilee. All classes, all conditions, both 
sexes, every age, partake the general joy. A grave, 
plain man, arrayed in modest black, that rides, un- 
covered, on the steed, more conscious than himself 
of the occasion, is the magnet that attracts all eyes, 
and touches every heart. He reaches the Capitol. 
He ascends the steps. He stands, majestic in his 
meekness and simplicity, before the immeasurable 



8 

multitude, who have brought up with them the hom- 
age of the nation. The highest officer of Justice ad- 
ministers to him the most magnificent oath that ever 
rises up to heaven. And the youthful ensign, the 
gallant general, the laborious farmer, is President 
OF THE United States. 

" One little month" has passed. It is a fitful April 
day. Again, the Federal city is astir. Cannons are 
heard : but these are minute guns. The bells peal 
out : but 'tis the funeral knell. The streets are 
thronged : but every face is sad, and every voice is 
still. Once more, a long procession passes do^vn that 
noble Avenue : but yew and cypress take the place 
of nodding plumes, and muffled drums beat time to 
aching hearts. Again, that grave, plain man is there : 
no more erect and tall, the pillar of the State ; but 
in his grave clothes, stretched upon the funeral Car. 
He enters not the gate, as when we last beheld him, 
to that glorious Capitol ; but turns aside, to the still 
spot, where sleep the honoured dead : and " earth to 
earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust," concludes the 
story and the scene. Never had man a funeral so 
sublime. Never, for Chieftain fallen, did a whole 
nation so pour out its heart. Was it not beautiful — 
and just as it was beautiful — that he, who, on that 
sleety day, began his public life, with pious rites for 
St. Clair's butchered host, should find himself such 
sepulchre ? 

Fellow citizens, is it not so that " truth is strange, 
stranger than fiction?" Can we yet realize that 
these things are ? Does it not seem like some wild 
night-mare dream ? Or, rather, like some deep, por- 



9 

lentous plot of the old Grecian drama, with range as 
wide, with themes as high, with incidents as various, 
with interest as thrilling; the same vicissitudes of 
fortune, the same procrastinated hopes, the same splen- 
did attainment of the loftiest aim, and then, in one 
more moment, the same catastrophe and cruel crush 
of all? But surprise, amaze, and overwhelm us, as 
it may, it still is sadly so. The brave soldier, the 
wise statesman, the honest man, the patriot Presi- 
dent, is taken from us, ere we yet had felt that he 
was ours : and we are met, to interchange our sym- 
pathies; and to comfort one another; and to draw 
from his life, and character, and services, and, chiefly, 
from this most striking incident of modern times, 
such lessons, both of patriotism and piety, as may 
serve to make us, if God bless them to our use, both 
better citizens and better men. 

The promise of his life, so far as parentage and 
education were concerned, could scarcely have been 
better. His father, Benjamin Harrison, was among 
the immortal sisfiiers of the Declaration of American 
Independence, and a man distinguished among those 
distinguished men. In 1764, he had been one of 
the remonstrants against the odious Stamp Act. He 
was a member of the first Continental Congress, 
which met in 1774. He was one of the Committee 
to place the country in a posture of defence ; one of 
the Committee to devise a plan for the support of the 
army; Chairman of the Committee whose agency 
secured the services of La Fayette and his compan- 
ions ; and, afterwards, a member of the Board of War. 

And, on the 10th of June, and 4th of July, 1776, he 
2 



10 

was among the foremost in the consummation of that 
glorious deed, which made, of thirteen British Pro- 
vinces, as many free and independent States; and 
laid, in this new world, the broad foundations of an 
empire, which will dishonour and betray its founders, 
and disappoint its destiny, if it be not the greatest, 
the most happy, and the most virtuous in the world. 
It was of such blood — show me the blood, and for 
the most part, I will tell you of the man I — and in 
such stirring times, that William Henry Karrison 
was born, at Berkley, on the James River, not far 
from Richmond, in Virginia, on the 9th day of Feb- 
ruary, 1773/ His birth was thus in the heroic age 
of the Republic ; and the stern virtues, simple man- 
ners, and self-denying habits of " the times that 
tried mens' souls" moulded him, even from the 
cradle, for a patriot and hero. His father dying in 
his eighteenth year, while he was yet at Hampden 
Sidney College, the care of his education devolved 
upon his guardian, Robert Morris, the great Finan- 
cier of the Revolution : and, with his permission, he 

' General Harrison was not less happy in his bringing up than in his blood. 
After all, the mother has the making of the man. I am happy in being in- 
debted to my esteemed neighbour and good friend, the Rev. Certlandt Van 
Rensselaer, for this notice of the mother of the President. It is taken from his 
sermon, in the city of Washington, on the Sunday after his decease ; as pub- 
lished in " the New World." — " He was 'trained up in the way he should go,' 
by the example and instructions of maternal love. His mother (of the Bassett 
family,) wbs a woman of piety and prayer. During the General's last visit to 
Virginia, he occupied his mother's apartments — the one in which he was born 
— and he took great interest in pointing out the closet to which she retired for 
private devotion, and th? corner of the room where she sat by the table to rend 
her Bible ; and where she taught him on hia knees to pray, ' Our Father which 
art in heaven !' " 



11 

repaired to Philadelphia, and commenced the study 
of medicine, under the care of Dr. Benjamin Rush; 
like Morris, a member of the great Congress of 1776, 
and signer of the Declaration of Independence. Thus 
was he brought up at Gamaliel's feet; and with such 
a training to bring out such blood, what wonder if 
we find him, at nineteen, his books forsaken for the 
sword, an ensign in the army, and engaged with 
Wayne, in that most desperate and most patriotic 
service, the rescue of the frontier states from the in- 
cursions of the Western Indians ! From his first 
service of piety and patriotism, on St. Clair's fatal 
field, his path was ever that of duty and of honour. 
The next year, he was made Lieutenant, and soon 
after Aid to that incarnate spirit of indomitable 
bravery, Anthony Wayne ; receiving more than once 
his never to be questioned attestation of devotion, skill, 
and gallantry. In 1775, at twenty-two, he was a 
Captain in command of an important frontier station, 
on the spot where now the city of Cincinnati stands ; 
and Washington himself appointed him, at twenty- 
four, the Secretary of the North Western Territory, 
and ex officio its Lieutenant Governor. From that 
Territory he became, at barely twenty-five, its first 
Representative in Congress ; and, though the young- 
est, one of the most effective members of that body ; 
and, among other most important measures, carried 
through a bill by which the Public Lands were made 
accessible to purchasers of moderate means, the pro- 
gress of improvement and of comfort accelerated in- 
finitely, millions paid into the public treasury, and 
homes created for unnumbered millions, in the ages 



12 

yet to come, of happy Christian freemen. In 1801, 
at twenty-nine, he was appointed Territorial Go- 
vernor of Indiana, and sole Commissioner for treaties 
with the Indians, with powers unlimited ; and re-ap- 
pointed, at the people's instance^ thirteen times. On 
the 6th of November, 1811, as Governor of Indiana, 
and Commander-in-chief, he gained the important 
victory over the Indians, at Tippecanoe ; a name, im- 
mortal now, as Marathon, or Monmouth, or New 
Orleans. In 1812, he was appointed, by President 
Madison, Commander-in-chief of the North Western 
army ; encountering dangers, enduring hardships, 
and performing services which won for him from 
every quarter confidence and praise. In April, of 
the following year, he conducted the successful de- 
fence of Fort Meigs, against the British troops and 
Indians ; and terminated it by a sortie, which, for its 
boldness of conception, and rapidity and energy of 
execution, ranks among the most distinguished acts 
of modern warfare. And, in October, he drove the 
enemy completely from the field in the decisive vic- 
tory of the River Thames—" a victory," said Langdon 
Cheeves, Speaker of the House of Representatives, 
" such as w^ould have secured to a Roman General, 
in the best days of the Republic, the honours of a 
triumph, and put an end to the war in Upper Cana- 
da." "The result," said President Madison, "is 
signally honourable to Major General Harrison, by 
whose military talents it was performed." "The bless- 
ings of thousands of women and children," says Gov- 
ernor Snyder of Pennsylvania, "rescued from the 
scalping knife of the ruthless savage of the wilder- 



13 

ness, rest on Harrison and his gallant army." His 
public life from this time was in civil stations. In 
1814 and 1815, he discharged most honourable duties, 
as a Commissioner of Indian treaties. In 1816, he 
went to Congress, where he was a prominent and 
influential member. In 1819, he was elected to 
the Senate of Ohio, where he served for several 
years. In 1824, he took his seat in the Senate of 
the United States, and succeeded General Jackson, 
as Chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs ; 
and from that station he was sent, in 1826, as Minis- 
ter Plenipotentiary to the Republic of Colombia. 
Twelve years, from his recal, he spent in dignified 
retirement at North Bend, from which the people's 
will summoned him, by the electoral vote of nine-, 
teen states, to the Chief Magistracy of the Republic, 
to be the first of sixteen millions of free men : a sta- 
tion from which the present life permits of no pro- 
motion; and from which, therefore, by an euthana- 
sia, more poetical than ever poet dreamed of, while 
yet the flush of triumph was upon his cheek, he was 
removed, to wait, in the serene asylum of the grave, 
the coming and the kingdom of his Lord. 

I have felt that there was no need to dwell upon 
the history of President Harrison. His life, with all 
its incidents and issues, is familiar to your ears as 
"household words." Never, I believe, was any man 
so thoroughly well known to any people. From the 
year 1791, v/hen he first entered the army, until the 
year 1829, when he came home from the Republic 
of Colombia, his life was wholly in the public ser- 
vice. And from 1835, to the present time, the eye 



14 

of the whole nation has been continually and intense- 
ly fixed upon him. He has been written of, spoken 
of and talked of; and, what makes more for thorough- 
ness of scrutiny, he has been written against, spoken 
against, and talked against, through all that time. If 
ever the charge of being deficient in enthusiasm 
rested on us, as a nation, the year last past has 
wiped it off". There is no echo in this land that has 
not answered to the name of Harrison. He has 
been chanted in songs, and painted on banners, and 
engraven on medals, and woven into ribbons, and en- 
amelled in vases. Not a deed of his that has not 
been discussed in Congress, and in the Legislature 
of every State, and at mass meetings from Maine to 
Georgia, and in the primary assemblies in every 
town. All his battles have been fought and fought 
again. The place where one of them occurred has 
been adopted as the name for gatherings in every city 
and in every village ; and supplied a watchword that 
has gone abroad on every breeze. The place of his 
residence, the materials of his house, the least im- 
portant of his daily habits, were taken up as counter- 
signs, and set to music, and immortalized in song. 
It may be said, in short, without a figure, that his 
private life was as public as the sun. That, under 
such circumstances, and wdth such a trial, he should 
be chosen, by so large a vote, to the first office in the 
nation, is praise beyond all eulogy. It releases from 
all necessity, and it leaves but little opportunity, on 
an occasion such as this, to speak with much detail 
either of his life or character. A few of its more ob- 
vious traits, however, shall be noticed now; and this 



16 

will bring us to the lessons which this striking pro- 
vidence seems meant to teach us. 

It never has been claimed for General Harrison 
that he was a man of brilliant parts. Neither was 
General Washington. Snch men are showy, taking, 
often dangerous, seldom useful. Their splendour is 
the excess of some one quality; most generally, at the 
expense of others, quite as valuable. They give 
more light than heat ; and are admired more than re- 
lied on. True greatness is the equipoise of parts. 
Shakspeare, the great philosopher of our humanity, 
has touched this truth with his own matchless skill. 



" the elements 



So mix'd in him, that nature might stand up, 
And say to all the world, This was a man!" 

So it was, beyond all men of ancient or of modern 
times, with General Washington. And it was this 
well mixing- of the elements that constituted General 
Harrison's greatness. He was, emphatically, a well 
BALANCED MAN. It was tliis wliich bore him up in 
all his different and weighty trusts, through an half 
century of public service — the Ensign of 19, the Pre- 
sident of 68 — and won for him his final triumph, and 
made him equal to that greatest of his trials, his suc- 
cess. It was this that carried him not only through 
the most unsparing canvassing that ever man en- 
dured ; but all the while developed new energies of 
character, and inspired new claims to confidence. 
It was by this, that even the nick-name that was 
every where applied to him, on banners and in songs, 
and would have cheapened in the public estimation 
any other man, was dignified by its connexion with 



16 

his character, and became a title of affectionate re- 
spect. It is a superficial explanation of his unlooked- 
for and unparalleled success, to say, that "the hur- 
rah" elected him. The greatest difficulty was not 
to catch, but to sustain, the popular gale. A craft 
that carried too much sail would have run under in 
it. Well built, well ballasted, well trimmed, it bore 
him straight to port. 

To specify a few of the good elements that were 
" so mixed in him." He was a man of dear, sound 
judgment. This is every where apparent in his 
course of life. Hence, his selection, while so young, 
to such high trusts, by men so keen in their analysis 
of character ; by Washington, by Jefferson, by Ma- 
dison, by Quincy Adams. It is apparent in his out- 
line of the principles by which a just administration 
of the Executive department should be governed, in 
his celebrated letter, in 1838, to Mr. Denny. And it 
was shewn, to take one great example, in the place of 
all that might be pointed out, in his selection of a 
Cabinet, at such a time, under such circumstances, 
of which, both as a whole, and as to its individual 
members, the nation has expressed unanimous, un- 
qualified approval. 

He had improved the native strength and sound- 
ness of his mind by careful studAj and reflection. 
"He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one." More 
practice with the sword and plough than with the 
pen exposed him, doubtless, to the criticism of using 
the materials, rather than the results, of scholarship. 
But, while there were those who charged the Inaugu- 
ral with being pedantic, who, for their lives, could not 



17 

have told whether this ancient name, or that, on which 
he dwelt, with such high zest, were from the Greek 
or Roman history; there was this charm about his 
pedantry, that it proved clearly that the piece was 

his. 

He was an eminently practical man. It must have 
been so ; or he never would have exercised so well 
and wisely the office of Territorial Governor, so com- 
plicated and so arduous in its responsibilities, as to 
be re-appointed to it so often, and so long. That he 
was so, the great measures prove which he espoused 
and carried through, in his Congressional career. 
That he was so, his announcement of the principles 
of his administration clearly showed. And even more 
so, the alacrity with which, from his twelve years' 
retirement, at North Bend, he stepped at once, as if 
promoted from the Cabinet, into the duties of the 
Presidential office. 

He was a man of great directness. He had no 
knowledge of stratagem and subterfuge. He went 
by the air-line to the object which he sought; and 
verified the saying of the Sultan Akbar, that ''he 
never heard of any man being lost in a straight road." 
This was the secret of his great success in dealing 
with the Indians. He made not less than thirteen 
treaties with them : all securing their just rights, 
and all promoting the advantage of the government. 
A common view of things would seek to match the 
savage subtlety with cultivated cunning. There is 
no greater error. The overmatch for craft is honest, 
open dealing, universally. Your wily politician stands 
no chance with such a man as General Harrison. He 

3 



38 



IS thrown off the track at once. It is what the Scrip 
ture saith, " He taketh the wise in their own crafti- 



ness." 



He was an honest man. What mines of wealth w^ere 
opened to him, in his long- connexion with the pub- 
lic lands, and in his dealings with the Indians, those 
hapless victims of the cupidity of agents ! And yet, 
he lived poor, and he died poor. He held his offices 
for service, not for spoils. 

He was a zealous man. In this way, he made up 
for shining talents. What he undertook, he did. He 
gave himself to do it. He spared no time, no pains. 
This you see in all his course. Especially, m the 
prosecution of the leading measures, which he under- 
took in Congress; the Land bill, the Militia system, 
the Revolutionary pensions, the free governments 
of South America. This he showed, in his short 
month, in his devotion to the Presidential duties. 

He was a kind a7id generous man. His house was 
filled with widows and with orphans. He had a seat 
by his cheerful hearth, a plate at his simple board, 
for every passer-by that needed fire or food. He 
was the liberal patron of all public enterprises, for 
the promotion of learning and religion : and the 
habit of his private hospitality was well expressed, 
in the long latch-string, that hung down, in every 
model, and in every picture, from his cabin door ; and 
never was pulled in. This was the secret of his 
universal popularity. The kindness, that was glow- 
ing in his heart, beamed from his countenance. He 
was felt to be, because in truth he was, the friend of 
all. And, in his few short weeks at Washington, he 



19 

had conciliated, by the frankness of his manners, his 
modesty, simpHcity, and friendhness, the affectionate 
respect of all of every class in the community. 

In one word, and to sum up all, he was a christian 
PATRIOT. He entered not upon his high and holy 
trust for God and man, without making this explicit 
declaration of his faith in Jesus Christ : " I deem the 
present occasion sufficiently important and solemn to 
justify me in expressing to my fellow citizens, a pro- 
found reverence for the Christian Religion, and a tho- 
rough conviction, that sound morals, religious liberty, 
and a just sense of religious responsibility, are essen- 
tially connected with all true and lasting happiness; 
and to that good Being, who has blessed us by the 
o-ifts of civil and relioious freedom : who watched 
over and prospered the labors of our Fathers ; and 
has hitherto preserved to us institutions far exceed- 
ing in excellence those of any other people, let us 
unite, in fervently commending every interest of our 
beloved country in all future time." He bought 
that day — an act of beautiful and simple piety! — 
a Bible and a Prayer Book; as if he would begin 
anew, in his new station, the sacred offices by 
which his life had been consoled and consecrated. 
He daily read, not without prayer, the holy word of 
God. He constantly repaired, for public worship, to 
the house of prayer. He prostrated himself, on bend- 
ed knee, in the assembly of the faithful. He had 
resolved,^ even on the next Lord's day that followed 



1 This is stated by his Pastor, the Rev, William Hawiey, Rector of St. 
John's Church, Washington city, who was with him through his sickness, and 
closed his eyes. 



20 

the commencement of that fatal sickness, to present 
himself, his soul and body, a living sacrifice, before 
the altar of his crucified Redeemer. And with those 
latest words — delirious, if you will, but proving still 
the ruling passion strong in death- — " Sir, I wish 

YOU TO UNDERSTAND THE TRUE PRINCIPLES OF THE 

Government: I wish them carried out: I ask 
NOTHING more" — words, as well suited to his illus- 
trious successor, as they were worthy of himself — he 
died, as he had lived, a Christian and a Patriot. 

And he is dead ! He, that so lately was in every 
mouth, the theme of praise or blame, has gone be- 
yond the reach of both ! He, for whose elevation to 
the Presidential chair, all business was suspended, 
all interests seemed tame, the very stream of life 
stood still, or rolled with torrent fulness in his wake, 
to sit there, but one little month ! He, whose acces- 
sion to the post of highest honour in the nation's gift 
was hailed, as the commencement of a new and 
brighter age — business to be revived, and confidence 
restored, and peace and plenty and prosperity in- 
creased and multiplied ; he, to whom every eye 
was turned, and on whose look such thousands hung, 
now lies, alone and still, the tenant of a cold and nar- 
row tomb ! Oh ! what a lesson, if men would but learn, 
of the uncertainty of all terrestrial things ! Oh ! what 
a lesson, if men would but learn, of the utter worth- 
lessness of human calculations! Oh! what a lesson, 
if men would but learn, that whatever men desire, 
design, or do, "the Lord God omnipotent reigneth!" 

Fellow citizens, is it not true that we have needed 
such a lesson? Has not our day of unexampled sun-^ 



21 

shine made us forgetful that a cloud could lower, or 
that a storm could break? Instead of leading us to 
penitence, as the Apostle tells us that it should, has 
not the heavenly goodness been abused to rank 
licentiousness, impenitence and unbelief? Were we 
not fast becoming a worldly, sensual, godless na- 
tion? I design not now to enumerate or to re- 
prove the mass of national or of individual vices. I 
confine myself to but one aspect. I ask your atten- 
tion to but one single point. Will you not all admit, 
that the great strife, which agitated the whole nation, 
like a stormy sea, the ground-swell not yet over, 
was entered into, and conducted, and the issue wel- 
comed, in forgetfulness of God; in utter and mistaken 
confidence in human wisdom, human power, and 
human worth ? As the great contest drew towards 
its crisis, did not all ears, all eyes, all hearts intensely 
fix themselves on the report, as it was borne from 
state to state ; as if the election of this candidate, or 
that, involved all fears, all hopes, all destinies'; and 
God were not in heaven? But, "be the people never 
so unquiet," God is there. "The shields of the 
earth belong to Him." And, " cursed be the man that 
maketh flesh his arm," however long his justice may 
delay the sentence, will be asserted, in terrific ven- 
geance, upon every nation, and upon every individual. 
It becomes us, then, to bow, in all humility, before 
the astounding stroke. To read, in that brief sway 
of the most noble empire that is lighted by the sun, 
the feebleness of human power ; in this unlocked for 
disappointment of the wisest plans, the fairest pros- 
pects, and the loftiest hopes, the blindness of all hu- 



22 

man wisdom ; in the rude shock, which makes the 
land to tremble, and all faces gather blackness, the 
resistless sovereignty of God. Forever blessed be 
his name, that, as his wrath is slow, and destruction 
his "strange work," so he is quick in mercy, and un- 
bounded in his tenderness, to them that turn to him 
with tears and prayers! "At what instant I shall 
speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, 
to pluck up and to pull down, and to destroy it, if that 
nation against whom I pronounced, turn from their 
evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do 
unto them." May it be, my fellow citizens, that we, 
roused by this voice of warning, may so turn from our 
evil ways, that God, propitiated to us by the inter- 
cession of his Son, may turn to us again, and bless us 
as a nation! Such as the individuals are, such the 
community must be. The work is in our individual 
hands. The cure is in our individual hearts. The 
blessing is for us, our children, and our children's 
children — peace, plenty and prosperity, the nation's 
heritage, as it has been so long ; and peace with God, 
and everlasting life, assured to all, through Christ, 
who take the Lord to be their God. 

The present sad solemnity should lead us to re- 
view the mercies which, as a nation, have been 
showered upon us ; and to gather, even from its most 
mournful aspects, wholesome lessons for the future. 
There have been completed thirteen Presidential 
terms; nine times the people's voice has summoned 
one of their own number to the loftiest station which 
a freeman can be called to fill ; and never before has 
the divine decree set aside their suffrages. When 



23 

we consider, that maturity of age, ripeness of wisdom, 
hoarded treasures of experience, are among the most 
immediate qualifications for the office, and that he 
who fills it bears a weight of duty and responsibility 
as great as man can bear, this must be owned a mer- 
ciful and gracious Providence. Had we not come 
almost to lose the thoug-ht of the Chief Mamstrate's 
mortality? Was there not danger, lest we quite ne- 
glect the best employment of that wise provision 
which the Constitution makes for this contingency? 
Was the consideration that he might be called to ex- 
ercise the first, a leading thought in our selection of 
the citizen to hold the second, office in our govern- 
ment? Was it not needful that the nation should be 
roused to its responsibilities ! Was it not time that 
we were taught, by such a lesson as would speak, 
with trumpet tongue, to every heart, the rashness of 
our confidence, our carelessness of what the future 
might bring forth? And what a trumpet voice it is ! 
A month, between the pinnacle of human fame and 
the cold grave! A month, between the high flood- 
tide of power and influence, with men, not only, but 
with nations, and the dust of death ! Fellow citizens, 
is not the touching sentiment of Edmund Burke 
forced home upon our hearts, " What shadows we 
are; and what shadows we pursue!" 

Short as the period was of General Harrison's ad- 
ministration, it has sufficed for useful lessons, and 
for signal benefits. Is it not a beautiful and most 
impressive lesson, and full of hope — let us not yield 
to the temptation, to say, pride — for our republican 
institutions, to see a private citizen, a simple farmer, 



I 



24 

a man without an hour of service in the Cabinet, 
called by a nation's voice, from the secluded shades 
of rural life, to take his place among the proudest 
princes of the earth : and to see him take it, with an 
assurance to our hearts of skill, and self-possession, 
and effective energy, which gives us perfect confi- 
dence that all our interests are safe; no shadow of a 
doubt, that our true honour, as a nation, is secure ; 
no moment's apprehension, that our glorious Consti- 
tution will be guarded, even to a letter ! And, when 
one little month has laid the nation's choice in the 
still grave, — without a shock, without a struggle, 
without one tremulous vibration of the ijreat ma- 
chine, — to see its destinies transferred to other hands ! 
A plain Virginia citizen, called, at an instant, from 
his fields, or from his books; the helm of government 
assumed as firmly, yet as modestly and quietly, as if 
he had but entered, at his father's death, upon the 
old homestead farm ; and the great ship, in which 
our destinies are all embarked, ploughing her gallant 
way, as proudly, and as peacefully, beneath that glo- 
rious banner of the stars and stripes, as if no cloud 
of change had passed across the sky! Fellow citi- 
zens, this is a new and searching trial of our institu- 
tions : provided for, indeed, by the deep wisdom of 
our fathers, but never called in action until now. To 
my mind, the experiment is full of hope and promise. 
It appeals to every generous sentiment. It chal- 
lenges our utmost confidence, as citizens and men. 
Let it not be our fault, if this unheard of crisis in 
our government does not approve us, before all na- 
tions, what we claim to be, a people who are sove- 



25 

reigns! Let all our efforts be exerted, let all our 
prayers be offered, that the nation's second choice 
may fill the measure of our highest expectation from 
their first ! 

There is one benefit from General Harrison's ad- 
ministration, of which no doubtfulness is possible; 
his clear, distinct, and manly determination to serve, 
under no possible circumstances, a second term. Let 
it be, that the Constitution does not forbid it. Let it 
be, that precedents in our past history have run the 
other way. Still, the temptation — let us honestly 
confess it ! — is too great for mortal man ; and if the 
illustrious authority of Harrison, now consecrated to 
us by the touch of death, shall be adopted, his brief 
possession of the power of the Executive may be 
fruitful of blessings, which the faithful exercise of 
its full period had perhaps failed to bring us. 

Fellow citizens, there is one lesson taught us by 
this mournful dispensation, of inestimable value; the 
lesson, that, as citizens of the United States, we all 
ARE ONE. We have too much forgotten it. The strife 
of conflicting parties has gone too far. We have 
been tempted to lose sight of the precious trust com- 
mitted to us, as freemen, by the great Arbiter of na- 
tions, in our devotion to the men or measures, which 
are but instruments for its promotion. We had come 
to look upon the settlement of that greatest question 
which ever comes before us, not as it tended to the 
national interest and honour, but as it made for our 
success, and for the triumph of our party. I deny 
not, that on all sides, honest purposes might lead to 
this result. I claim not, that a measure of it is not 



26 

inseparable from our free institutions ; and, in modera- 
tion, necessary to preserve their freedom. But I do 
say, that the evil has by far outrun the good. I do 
say, that the end has been lost sight of in the means. 
I do say, that private courtesy, social regards and 
Christian charity have been disregarded, in the 
chase for powder and office. I do say, that the very 
foundations of the republic have been shaken ; and 
the glory clouded, that should ever rest upon the 
citadel of freedom. God has reproved us from his 
throne. The flap of the death -angel's wing has pas- 
sed before all faces. And, in an instant, the nation's 
head has crumbled into dust ! It still is true — -bad 
as the world is! — it still is true, thank God! that 
"sorrow is a sacred thing !" At this affecting spec- 
tacle of mortality, hearts soften, eyes are moistened, 
hands are clasped. We own, as one great family, 
the common loss. We bend, as brethren all, be- 
side our father's grave. Let us accept the omen, fel- 
low citizens ! Let us own, and act upon, its lesson ! 
Let us no more forget our common country, our com- 
mon Constitution, our common heritage of freedom, 
and the warm blood, on Bunker Hill, at Monmouth 
and at Yorktown, that made it common to us all ! 
Honest differences we must entertain. Honest pre- 
ferences we must avow. But let all differences be 
merged, let all preferences be yielded, in the great 
cause which makes, and keeps us, freemen. Never 
let us forget the patriot grief, that, as on this day, 
bows the hearts of this whole nation, as one man. 
And, when the day of trial comes again, and we are 
tempted to forget our brotherhood of freedom, and 



27 

the debt we owe to her, who is the mother of us all; 
let us still hear the voice, which, from that patriot 
grave, speaks to our hearts, " Sirs, ye are brethren; 
why do ye wrong one to another?" 

Fellow citizens, have we not all felt, was it in na- 
ture not to feel, that, in the death of our Chief Magis- 
trate, death has come near us all? But he will come 
nearer yet YIq ivill come — when, God knows! — to 
me, to every one of you. And, should he come to- 
night, should we be ready to go forth and meet him ? 
Ah, my dear brethren, talk as we may, and as we 
must, of other thoughts, and other themes, this is the 
trial question for us all. And I should ill become 
my ofhce, and ill express the love which w^arms my 
heart for you, and ill discharge the trust with which 
the kindness of your honoured representatives has 
honoured me, did I not bid you, in my Master's 
name, to go, and make your peace with God, through 
Jesus Christ our Lord; and, in all holiness and 
righteousness of life, to wait, henceforth, His coming 
and His kino-dom ! 



How sleep the brave, who sink to rest, 
By all their country's wishes blest! 
When Spring, with dewy finger cold. 
Returns to deck their hallowed mould, 
She there shall dress a sweeter sod. 
Than Fancy's feet have ever trod. 

By fairy hands their knell is rung. 
By forms unseen their dirge is sung ; 
There Honour conies, a pilgrim gray, 
To bless the turf that wraps their clay, 
And Freedom shall awhile repair, 
To dwell, a weeping hermit, there ! 



LEJa'12 



I 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



011 895 549 3 



vgmM 



mmm 

,jMmm 



